The NorthWesternBelle

Hey, y'all. It's been a minute. The first quarter of 2019 was rough, but here we are on the other side of tax day and we're still trucking on. We'll keep at it. I've been having a lot of fun in the Mud Bakery. So much so that I forget that content is part of my job, too. My video production cycle waned over the last few months, but I'm back at it to capitalize on the Game of Thrones Season 8 premiere last Sunday, and the next five frantic weeks until the season ends. Then (let's be honest), the slow down-curve of interest until the prequel series gets serious. Whenever that may be. Admittedly, I was late to the GOT bandwagon. I didn't start watching the HBO series until Season 7 was airing, and I didn't read the first book until last month. So, still a noob, but no one is more zealous than a convert, right? Right. And I am solidly in the late convert camp when it comes to A Song of Ice & Fire and zealous as hell. Last week, the week lea...

It's probably not really a surprise that I have taken to zen doodling and hand lettering on clay. Exhibit A: the Pot Bellied Tea Mugs. They were nice and leather hard when I first cut into the, and the bodies are nice and thick, so I was able to get a really good purchase with my embossing tool.  This one might be my favorite. A lot of sponging and tracing goes into making the lines this clean. I've been told that using saran wrap can reduce that labor. I'll need to give that a try because it's time consuming, and I tend to get obsessive. The plates were a little bit too dry for carving, and I've lost a couple of plates recently to over-confident carving, so I think I was a little bit lighter-handed than needed on this one in particular. Carving is a little bit risky because details can get lost if you use the wrong glaze. I'm planning on using Yellow Winkur on these, which is a matte orange that, recently, has been pooling yellow on ...